Gates Foundation

The digital divide between those who have Internet access and those who do not is often described as an economic or geographical issue, but there is another divide that actually runs across both of those other segmentations: education. Currently, some 72% of schools in the U.S. have out of date, slow, or no Internet connections. And that impacts how students at those schools are able to… Read More

In 2012, the buzz around education technology reached new heights and, with the new year now underway, the hype surrounding the potential transformative impact of technology on both higher and K-12 education continues, thanks to initiatives like the one Udacity is piloting with largest university system in the world, which aims to bring affordable, lower-division and remedial online courses to… Read More

Back in September, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a contest that aimed to challenge entrepreneurs and app developers to build awesome, innovative education apps on Facebook’s platform. The so-called College Knowledge Challenge kicked off with an EdTech hackathon co-hosted by the Gates Foundation and Facebook, located at the social network’s headquarters in Menlo Park. Read More

As the influence of technology grows in education, many have started to predict the coming obsolescence of classroom fixtures like textbooks, chalkboards, standardized testing — and even teachers. While technology will no doubt transform and replace some familiar pieces of education (for the better), the ideal outcome is not one in which teachers are replaced or marginalized, but one… Read More

Bill Gates is spending most of his time these days with the Gates Foundation, which he started with his wife Melinda to take a new approach to philanthropy after leaving his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft. Gates has been blogging occasionally and taking to Twitter.
Today, he is going back to college on a speaking tour to encourage students to take on big challenges like fighting… Read More